Chapter 22
Slap!
“Wakey wakey, dumb nigga!” Nathan backhanded Simon so hard that he rocked the chair Simon was bound to.
“Damn, bro! We need the motherfucka conscious, not dead!” Nicky pulled his brother back and gave him a wide-eyed look.
“My bad. I don’t know my own strength at times,” Nathan said and shrugged.
Nicky gave Boogie an apologetic look as Simon came to. Boogie had called Nicky to meet him in Harlem, and he brought Lorenzo and Nathan with him. They were going to take Simon in the alley next to Diana’s and deal with him there. However, they didn’t want to risk the chance of being seen. Lorenzo had the idea of moving Simon to one of Marco’s garage warehouses to interrogate him.
“Mmm,” Simon groaned, regaining consciousness. He opened his eyes and squinted at the bright overhead light. He tried to move his arms, and when he realized he couldn’t, that was the moment he noticed he wasn’t alone. Slowly he looked around at all of the weapons on the walls and tables around them. “Where am I?”
“For you? Hell,” Boogie spoke, standing in front of him.
“Why didn’t you just kill me? You had the perfect opportunity to.”
“Because I think you have some information for me.”
“I don’t have shit for you.”
“Then maybe I should just kill you now.” Boogie pointed his gun at the middle of Simon’s forehead.
“Go ahead. Killing me isn’t going to stop what the Triad has planned for you.”
“The Triad?” Boogie said and furrowed his brow.
“Oops, I’ve said too much,” Simon said sarcastically.
“Nigga, that shit ain’t real,” Nathan said. “This ain’t no movie.”
“Oh, I assure you it’s very real, and they’re here in New York as we speak. Soon those precious empires you’ve worked so hard to build will be theirs. And you’ll just be a memory.”
“What do they have up their sleeve?” Boogie asked.
“Now why the fuck would I tell you that?” Simon looked at Boogie like he was stupid.
“What business do you have with them?”
“I was just supposed to kill you and get you out of the way. You should be proud of yourself, young man. You’ve made quite the name for yourself. The Chinese consider you their biggest threat.”
“Well, now they should consider me their biggest threat,” Zo’s voice sounded as he glared at Simon.
“And you are?”
“Lorenzo Alvarez.”
“Oh, you’re the boy of the motherfucka who got his head chopped off,” Simon taunted him, and Zo wasn’t able to hold back. He stepped forward and punched Simon repeatedly in the face until his nose leaked blood.
“Chill.” Boogie finally stepped in before Zo could hit him again.
“They threw the rest of his body in the ocean with the fishes. How did it feel to only have a head to bury?” Simon kept going.
It took both Boogie and Nicky to hold Zo back, even though Boogie really wanted to let him go. The things Simon was saying about Marco weren’t right, and he could feel his own blood boiling. He put his hand on Zo’s chest to tell him that he had it. When Boogie turned back to Simon, he delivered his own powerful blow to his face. Simon grunted from the pain of the punch, and blood from his mouth splattered to the floor. Still, that didn’t stop him from talking.
“It’s ironic, isn’t it? That all of you standing here before me are angry about things that you do to other people’s families too.”
“The Chinese are pissin’ off more people than I ever did right now,” Boogie retorted. “Why are they so confident?”
“Now you’re asking the questions that need to be asked. Have you ever played chess, Boogie?”
“I haven’t played in a while. But I know the rules.”
“Then you’re familiar with the objective of the game. The goal is to defeat the king, right? And right now Tao sees that as you. You have the most controlling power in New York right now. And what’s the best way to kill the king?”
“You tell me.”
“Destroy all of his allies. Even the pawns. Like say, Stefano.”
“You killed Stefano?” Boogie asked.
“Like I said earlier, it’s easy to sneak up on a man when he’s only paying attention to one thing. You and your people are only looking for motherfuckas with slanted eyes. Not people who look like you. It wasn’t hard to follow you and figure out who the closest people are to you. It also wasn’t hard to follow them while they made their moves. I found my way to Stefano shortly after they left him. His and his boys’ bodies are probably still down there stinking after what we did to him.”
“Well, I guess it’s a good thing that Stefano didn’t have a big part in the grand scheme of things.” Boogie kept a poker face although he felt a twinge of annoyance.
Stefano being knocked off the board didn’t change much. Ultimately, however, Boogie was counting on the Italians siding with them. There was strength in numbers.
“It doesn’t matter. Because soon everything you love and care about is going to be in the dirt. For example, your girlfriend and her daughter? They have an expiration date.”
At the mention of Roz and Amber, Boogie put cement in his face again. That time his head bobbed like a bobblehead. He had shown where his true weakness was, but he didn’t care. Threatening their safety was a surefire way to die.
“You’re doing a lot of talking for someone who is tied to a chair,” Nicky commented, stepping forward.
“That’s because I can back it up.”
“And how are you so sure? You’re about to die.”
“I don’t think so.” The confident way that he spoke made Boogie and Nicky look at each other.
Suddenly Simon began to laugh uncontrollably. His face was so badly beaten that smiling had to be very painful. But still, he laughed away.
“Yo, what the fuck is so funny, B?”
“All of you standing here. Boogie, the one thing that you need to know about me is that I never go anywhere without a plan B and C. I had complete confidence that I would kill you, but unfortunately I was wrong. But I had a failsafe put in place.”
“Oh, yeah? And what was that?”
“Lift up my shirt and see.”
Boogie gestured for Zoe to go lift up Simon’s shirt. When he did, they saw a small device taped to his chest. Taking a closer look, Boogie noticed that there was a small white light flashing on it.
“What is that?” Nathan asked.
“Just in case I wasn’t able to kill you, I took a chance that you might not kill me either. Now that probability was really low, so all of this is your fault, really. You should’ve killed me in Harlem. Because now the Chinese have been checking our location this entire time.”
Boogie’s eyes enlarged. He aimed his gun back at Simon’s head and placed his finger on the trigger. Right before he was able to squeeze, the loud sound of glass shattering filled the garage warehouse. A smoke bomb had been thrown inside, and their surroundings began to get cloudy. Boogie tucked his face inside of his shirt to keep from choking. Soon after, the bullets started to rip. He had no choice but to leave Simon alive and jump for cover. Red beams invaded the garage trying to find a target, and more bullets followed.
“The back!” Zo shouted in the near distance. “Follow me!”
Boogie peered around the shelf he was hiding behind and saw Nicky and Nathan crouched following Zo. He glanced back at Simon, who was still tied to the chair. Simon saw him and winked.
“You can’t run forever, boy.”
Soon after, the garage began to flood with people shouting in Mandarin. Boogie didn’t waste any more seconds. He ran after the others. Zo took them to a secret shaft door in the floor and yanked it open. It led to an unfinished basement. When they were all down there safe and sound, Zo pulled the hatch back down and ran down the stairs.
“This way.” He waved for them to follow him. “This is a tunnel that leads to another building nearby. My papá had it built years ago just in case the Feds ever tried to come down on him.”
They moved with a purpose and got to the other building in minutes. That building turned out to be a garage too, but instead of weapons, there were cars. Marco had been a very smart man. They all piled in a Dodge Caravan and drove away from the scene.
“Fuck. I wish I’d gotten the chance to bust on one of them chink motherfuckas!” Nathan growled from the back and hit his seat.
“Me too.” Zo nodded as he drove. “But the way to avenge my papá isn’t to go on a suicide mission. There were too many of them. We would have died or been taken prisoner.”
“Yo, Boogie, you knew that nigga?” Nicky asked, glancing out the window to make sure they weren’t being followed.
“I had a few run-ins with his family,” Boogie answered. “But Simon? That was only my second time meeting him.”
“From the sounds of it, it won’t be the last either.”